


priorites

by donttouchthebombs13



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, is that a tag ppl use, references to past depression, stan centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donttouchthebombs13/pseuds/donttouchthebombs13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan sometimes thinks that his life has consisted of him doing his best and still falling short of adequacy</p>
            </blockquote>





	priorites

**Author's Note:**

> i am a gravity falls baby but i have a huge soft spot for inexperienced parental figures who are doing their best  
> uhh set a while after stanley comes back through the portal

Contrary to the overwhelming belief in his household, Stanford Pines was neither stupid nor blind. He knew very well that Gravity Falls was, to put it kindly, different. And, if he wanted to be really honest with himself, he knew that the twins knew about it. However, Stan Pines was many things, and honest wasn’t one of them. If he admitted he knew exactly what the twins were getting up to when they were “wandering”, then he’d have to find something to do about it. Which would mean grown up, honest conversations (they reminded him far too much of himself and his brother to believe they’d be stopped by “don’t go wandering” or “stay in the shop”). Those were conversations that he’d, ideally, never have to have, and ones he sure as hell wasn’t going to have with a pair of 12 year olds.

So, he pretends he doesn't know. It's not ethical or responsible, but _christ_ , when you're trying to repower an interdimensional portal that's had its fuses blown for the last 30 years, there has to be a little leeway.

(He doesn't know the extent of their little excursions - won't know for a long time, until Stanley is back, and Dipper , so eager to share his adventures with _“the author himself”_ let all of their little "adventures" slip, and for the next 3 days Stan felt like his heart was going to give out.)

But, at a certain point he can't ignore it. He can't ignore the way Mabel and Dipper come down to breakfast some days, quiet and tense, with tired eyes. They do their best to hide it, but they're _12_ for god's sake, they're hardly the masters of deception. And he feels panic, and it's not the first time he's ever felt it, but it's the first time it's because of something tangible.  It's not the same kind of panic he feels when it occurs to him that he might not be able to fix the portal, that his brother might be stuck somewhere, wherever the hell he was, forever, and there was nothing he could do. That panic was old, and familiar. An annoying roommate who you keep around because he pays more than his share of rent. It was a panic that kept him working, kept him driven, kept the terrible fucking exhaustion that he had felt when Stanley first disappeared at bay. But this kind of panic - it was different. It was evident in Mabel's nervous hands at the dinner table, or the quiet, serious conversations she and her brother had when they thought he couldn't hear.

 He saw them swing wildly, from elated and filled with confidence, what he would later learn was the thrill of solving a mystery, and drawn, serious silence while they worked through whatever new mystery vexed them. And he knew he had to do something, because if he learned one thing from his brother it was how easy it was to lose yourself in this town’s mysteries.

So he does what he can to tether them to normal. He was wasn't obvious about it (he tries very hard not to be obvious about anything that bordered too close to the emotional). But, if he thought the house was too quiet, or the kids were looking to serious, he'd peak into the attic. Try to think of a color of wool Mabel doesn't have yet, or some new brain puzzle that Dipper hasn’t solved. He'd leave it tucked in corners of the house, some new surprise for them to stumble upon. It didn’t always work, but it kept the panic at bay, and at a certain point in life you learn to take what you can get. (Sometimes he thinks that he should feel bad about it – allowing them to continue when he knew how dangerous this shit was. But he doesn’t have time to split between rebuilding the portal and covering their eyes every time some fresh creature crawls out of the woods, and the earliest lesson he remembers is “Stanford, you have to learn how to _prioritize_ ”)

When Dipper finally comes clean about the journal, Stan swings between, overwhelming relief, and barely suppressed rage. Realizing that the puzzle piece he’d been searching for after 30 years had been less than a mile away from him the whole time made him desperately want to break things. Even so, it was good to know that they had a (semi) successful weirdness hunter guiding them along. And though he’s very tempted to refuse to give the journal back, he decides to go with the same theory of the parents who decide to teach their kids how to swim; it's dangerous, and as parents it’s a little terrifying, but when you live next to a lake it's going to happen regardless, so you prepare them the best you can.

It's a little easier once everyone is a little closer to the same page. The twins know that he’s very much aware of Gravity Falls’…. uniqueness He knows that twins have one of the journals. They don't have to hide as much from each other anymore. The first aid kit makes its way back to the kitchen from its old home beneath Mabel’s bed, and Soos patches the twins up in the light of the kitchen window instead of them doing it themselves up in the attic.

So it's better, but not much, because he's closer to his goal every day, and his thoughts are consumed with it, more than they've ever been before. It’s harder and harder to hide this from the twins. His hands seem to reek of chemicals, and the brown outs caused by the massive power that thing is drawing seem interminable. It seems more and more obvious every day, like someone wrote _'PUTTING THE SAFETY OF THE UNIVERSE AT RISK ON A PIPE DREAM’_ on his forehead.

As he got closer and closer, the nagging voice in his head would say _“tell them”_.  They’d know soon enough, and if he told them sooner rather than later, he might get a little more control over the story of him they would hear. He knows how dangerous this is, and he knows that they deserve a chance to understand but – god. They just - they tether him to normal in the same way he tried to do for them. His life had been running the shop and fixing the portal – that was it. The people in this town didn’t like him, and he didn’t care because they didn’t help him to achieve his goal. But the twins came and his life became – different.

It became learning that Mabel always wears big sweaters because she’s oversensitive to cold, and that Dipper will only drink juice if he poured it himself because it’s too sweet for him to drink on its own, and no one else can get the water to juice ratio just right. Mabel has stickers for every possible occasion and Dipper, despite his attempts at being a serious and brooding adventurer, loves Top 40 pop songs and making his sister laugh. Mabel, despite being occasionally boy-crazy, is fiercely defensive of other girls. Dipper has a pen chewing habit that allows Stan to gauge how serious his new mystery is by how dark the ink stains on the corner of his mouth are. Small, every day facts become as important as 30 year old notes scrawled in an old journal. The kids made him laugh, and around them he felt old and petty and protective and human. He had forgotten how _good_ that felt.

And so he’s selfish. And he liked seeing them happy, and he liked _feeling_ happy, and he’s a lifelong procrastinator, so really, no one should be surprised that he put off telling them the truth until the literal last minute.

He regretted it afterwards, of course - Mabel and Dipper feel betrayed, by him and by each other, and one he can try to fix, but the other he can't do anything for. They fix themselves though. They patch each other up the way they would before they told Stan about the journals, in secret, during the calm after the storm. Stan isn't sure of the details - apparently Bill Cipher was involved - but he knows better than anyone that almost losing your twin makes you very clear sighted.

Things aren’t perfect though (they very rarely are in Gravity falls). The energy from the portal draws monsters unlike any of them have ever seen, and when the twin’s tired eyes and restless sleep comes back, a ball of yarn can’t fix it.

Sometimes Stan lies awake at night, after days when Mabel comes home with her shoulder torn up by a claw as big as her head, or Dipper gets bruises on his neck by something millions of years old, and he thinks _“I’m sorry. I did my best. I’m sorry.”_

                                                              

* * *

 

_A little boy wraps himself in his mother's arms, cries into her shoulder. "I don't know what to do, mommy. I told Stanley I was sorry, but he's still mad at me"_

_"I know you did sweetheart" his mother says soothingly, "but you promised your brother that you'd be careful with his telescope, and then you broke it."_

_"But I didn't mean to", the boy argued, "I tripped. I was doing my best to be careful with it, it wasn't my fault."_

_"Sometimes Stanford-"  His mother halts. "Sometimes our best isn't enough."_

**Author's Note:**

> i impulse wrote and posted this a 2 am while my beta was sleeping so, sorry  
> i haven't written in a very long time so im open to any and all constructive crit  
> you can message me about gravity falls or writing or prompts or whatever on tumblr at montparnah


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